


you have to know your name

by karatam



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karatam/pseuds/karatam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She only has two months left until she graduates.</p><p>She is Reaped instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you have to know your name

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'girl on fire' ficathon on LJ

She is the top of her class.

“Destined for head engineer,” they say, “just like her mother.”

The tests are all easy, the projects fun. She smiles as another problem, another equation, is placed in front of her to solve.

She only has two months left until she graduates.

She is Reaped instead.

Alvin, the male Tribute, is two years below her in school, even though he was born a year ahead of her. His eyes are wide and wet. He is terrified. He is also at least thirty pounds heavier than she is.

Absently, she calculates how much force would be required to flip him over her back. She is not sure she could do it.

The train is amazing. She presses her face to the glass of the window, trying to get a good look at the tracks and the lead car. She suspects magnets. Maybe she’ll ask the Tributes from District 3; they would probably know how the train works.

When she gets to training, she is shocked by just how big some of the other Tributes are. District 5 is not a heavily populated area, its people more valued for their brains than their strength. It takes intelligence to properly run a power plant to maximum efficiency.

The Careers corner her during a lunch break one day, making fun of her short stature and scrawny limbs. One of the girls, Clove, is only a few inches taller than she is, but she doesn’t say anything. Cato shoves her into a wall as he leads his pack away.

When her stylist asks her about the large bruise covering her shoulder, she just says she fell during the obstacle course.

A trainer shows her the memory game and she smiles for the first time in three days.

The interviews are a blur of lights and sounds and far too many people. She thinks she said something about being able to handle anything that comes her way. She thinks she sounded arrogant.

Her score comes up as a five, and she can’t pretend to be surprised.

She stands on the platforms, waiting as the countdown flashes across the sky.

It begins.

She runs for the forest, grabbing a bag as she goes and seeing two other Tributes doing the same. Hitting the edge of the forest, she ignores the burning in her legs and lungs and doesn’t stop, even when she slams right into Katniss. There’s a moment when she thinks she’s going to die, but Katniss doesn’t go for her knife and so she runs again.

Her snares don’t catch anything but one mouse on the second day, but she doesn’t dare make a fire. Not after what happened to that Tribute last year. She does better with the plants – finds a few tubers and berries that she recognizes from the lesson in Training – but there are so many that the instructor didn’t cover. She doesn’t want to resort to trying them out until she has to.

The Careers have piled up all their goods by the Cornucopia, but there’s something wrong. Only Robin from District 3 is guarding it. The boy is brilliant – smarter than she is even – but he’s also the smallest Tribute besides Rue. She watches carefully as the Careers come back, hooting about a kill. Clove wants an apple and has Marvel get one for her. He hops around in a weird pattern before stopping completely and jumping for the pile.

Booby trapped, then.

When a smoke column goes up and the Careers leave again, she waits until Robin is facing the other way before she goes for it. Following Marvel’s exact pattern, she grabs a few pieces of food – she hasn’t eaten in two days – before running back to the woods. She catches a glimpse of a silver bow in the forest a hundred meters away and smiles; Katniss is around.

An explosion throws her forward and she scrambles back to the Cornucopia to see the smoking crater where the supplies used to be. Cato snaps Robin’s neck and she winces. The Careers leave and she sneaks over to the less destroyed supplies, finding a knife and a pot.

There is a sound in the field behind her and she freezes. Thresh is still in that field of grass. She flees for the woods once more.

Huddling under a fallen tree that night, she realizes that there are only eight of them left and the Careers have no supplies anymore. For the first time, she considers the possibility of winning. Then she frowns and reaches a hand up to feel her ribs. She can count them through her skin.

She goes through her symptoms: a gnawing feeling in her stomach, an increasing headache, shaking hands. She is starving to death, and quickly. She has only a small roll and two apples.

No sponsor has sent her anything.

The next few days pass slowly and her food is gone, but she doesn’t dare venture too far from the Cornucopia, having seen the wall of fire that had raced through one part of the arena. The cannon has gone off twice since the explosion, leaving only six.

Suddenly, Claudius Templesmith’s voice booms that a District team can now win together. Lucky Two and Twelve, she thinks. She wishes Alvin was still alive.

The voice booms out again, announcing a feast at the Cornucopia the next day. She is only a few hundred meters away and she would bet that Katniss put as much distance between herself and Two as possible. Making a decision, she runs – her legs are so weak, it hurts, oh, it hurts – to the horn and tucks herself as far in as she can.

Then she waits.

Bags are delivered by one of the Capitol’s flying machines and she watches it fly away. She would love to fly. She also knows disjointed thinking is a symptom.

She surges out of her hiding place and grabs her bag, giving a second to thinking about taking another bag before dismissing the idea. The forest is her safe haven again and she makes her way to that fallen tree.

A single loaf of bread is in her bag and she lifts it out carefully. There is a lightning bolt etched into the crust.

It’s from home.

Closing her eyes, she takes one bite of the bread and chews slowly.

It tastes like home.

It takes her two days to eat the small loaf and the gnawing feeling in her belly abates somewhat. She knows she still doesn’t have long, maybe three days at most before she falls over dead.

She is dozing under her tree when she hears loud footsteps come crashing through the undergrowth. Keeping a firm, if shaky, grip on her knife, she creeps out to take a look.

Katniss and Peeta are walking side by side, talking quietly. They mention her, though not by name. Katniss seems to bite the inside of her cheek before saying, forcefully calm, that they should split up to find more food.

There is a moment of indecision before she picks who to follow. All she can think is _food_.

Peeta is carefully pulling berries off a bush and placing them on his jacket spread out on the forest floor. After striping that bush, he wanders off to another one down the path.

She keeps her eye on him and dashes forward to grab a handful of the berries. They’re dark blue and juicy looking. After inspecting them carefully, she can’t recall them from her lesson but her head is so foggy that she is having a hard time recalling much of anything.

She is just so hungry.

Biting down on a few berries, she has just enough time to appreciate their sweet taste before she starts to feel her throat close up.

The word ‘nightlock’ comes to her just then and she almost laughs.

Fourth place and she never took a life. Maybe it’s some kind of record.

Strangely, even as she is gasping for air, all she can think is _they didn’t even know my name._

Her name is Marian.


End file.
